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******
12 Steps to Stardom
Saturday Night - March 1998
Callum Keith Rennie has had a great four years. Now if he can only survive the next four
By Veronica Cusack
"You fart hammers pull those weapons in Chicago...": Callum Keith Rennie spits the words across the barroom sleaze of the Due South set.
"What the fuck does fart hammers mean?" demands Paul Gross.
"Creeps. It's in the Big Book."
"Well," pronounces Gross, executive producer and senior writer, "if it's in the Big Book I guess we have to let it go."
Filming resumes. "Callum has a dictionary of American slang he carries around," Gross later explains. "We call it the Big Book, but he only has A to H; he's missing the rest. We're going along and suddenly he will come up with somthing he's found. What's neat is that I'd never write that; fart hammers is just not something that comes to mind. It's not a big deal, it's just part of a line yet it adds colour that is perfect for the show. But nothing after H."
In the slightly demented, lisenced in 110 countries, viewed by umpteen million television series Due South, thirty-seven year old Callum Keith Rennie stars opposite Gross's decorous Mountie as a manic Chicago detective who acts without consideration, speaks without thought and years to lose himself in the gentle glide of ballroom dancing. Twelve months of Toronto shooting, covering the show's final two seasons, this month comes to an end. His stint as a replacement for David Marciano (who left the series last year in a fit of financial pique) has ensured the actor extensive exposure in Europe, North America and the Pacific. It has enabled him to work with established, even great performers and earned him money far removed from the welfare cheques of his not-too-distant past.
"It's hard to be interviewed," Rennie says, in a Queen Street West cafe. "I don't want to sound arrogant but I don't want to sound like a pushover and I don't know who I am but I think I am defined by my relationships but I don't have that many friends..."
He has the face of an ascetic, fragile bones straining against pale skin. There is a nervous elegance to his movements, in how his spine curves toward a conversations. His eyes glint ice blue, the left red-rimmed, tiring easily, its vision weak. He is conceit and humility all at once, confession and concealment. Stream-of-consciousness jags abate, though never completely disappear, and make way for introspection, contemplation. "I'm called 'bad boy' or 'the new James Dean' by those who want to romanticize my past - who don't want to see it as a life of pain in which I was another person."
"A brilliant actor able to suggest the capacity for both extreme violence and gentle compassion with just a look," declared The Vancouver Sun in late 1996 when Rennie starred in the CBC's acclaimed For Those Who Hunt the Wounded Down. "Easily Canada's hottest young actor," proclaimed Britain's Screen International magazine after his appearance in Bruce McDonald's Hard Core Logo, the story of an imploding rock band. In an earlier life, Rennie worked as a tree planter, paper baler, bartender. He is a recovering alcoholic, sweet as sin when it pleases him, at other times a disturbing, disconcerting presence: "I'm an addict - print that!"
I wait for the Click, the moment when a subject relaxes, forgets formality and begins to truly talk. It doesn't always happen; some are ever aware of the public face. With Rennie is happens repeatedly. Off. On. Off. On. Self-concern, revelation, apprehension, candour. It comes in a tony restaurant across from a white linened table top; in the middle of a cell-phone call from his chauffeured car: "I'm going to get a tumour in my head," he laughs, then stays on the line for an hour; from a tall ship afloat on Lake Ontario, until he's called back to filming, "I have to go now and kiss a serving wench."
Born in the industrial city of Sunderland in northeast England, Rennie immigrated to Canada at the age of four and was raised in middle-class Edmonton, the second of three sons. "I thought about being an actor at eighteen, but didn't do anything about it. It seemed like a vain retarded thing to pursue." Instead he clutched at the fledgling punk movement and the Sex Pistols' creed of "get pissed; destroy." He had been drinking heavily since since his mid-teens. "When I was seventeen I drank a twenty-six ounce bottle of vodka in half an hour and went into convulsions. I woke up in the hospital. Alcohol became many things: an antidote to pain, a means of being more outspoken, a way to feel better than I did in my regular life. I'm sure I laughed a lot, if only I could remember. I didn't see it as a problem until later on, until everything around me - relationships, trust - was destroyed. When did fun become fun with problems and then become just problems?"
I recognize that final sentece, know it has been recited to other journalists. The past is his shield, talking about it his means of keeping others at bay. Like acting, it is an elaborate armour. "On the Due South set I can talk to anyone, say anything. Saturdays [away from the set] are insane. I'm unsure if I can go outside - what's it like out there? how is everyone? was I cruel today? I don't know if I can deal with people. I don't know how many weird things I can see in one day before I have to go home and lie down. Sunday is a fucking eternity."
In the early eighties, friends at the University of Alberta asked him to write for and join the cast of a campus radio show inspired by the British Goon Show. The same troupe produced David Mamet's American Buffalo at the 1985 Edmonton Fringe Festival and Rennie played the part of Bobby, the artless young protege of two small time cons. He had discovered his vocation. But he was still drinking, more. "I woke up in alleys and drunk tanks. I needed to drink until it hurt. Alcohol made me scrambled, fucked, screwed up. It's all about losing because losing is where you want to be. Other drugs don't give you the same shit feeling you need."
He moved to Vancouver, questioning his own abilities - Can I act? Can I participate in the world? - and enrolled in the Bruhanski Theatre Studio. "His was a self-destructive tremendous talent," recalls Alex Bruhanski. "Callum's battles were never with his craft. They were always with Callum."
Christopher Newton, artistic director of the Shaw Festival, invited Rennie to appear in the 1990/91 season after seeing the Touchstone Theatre production of Lost Souls and Missing Persons, his first professional performance. "I recognized he was incredibly talented and charismatic with the natural gift of making dialogue sound true," says Newton. "Acting came easy to him, but at the Shaw he realized this profession could be difficult." Newton is being diplomatic. Rennie remembers missed performances, benders. "I was used to a co-op mentality," he says now, "not the corporate world of theatre. I can handle a life audience of a hundred or so but nothing bigger than that. Knowing all day long a gig is coming up, that would haunt me."
Despite fascination with self - "Being with Callum is about Callum," says his friend, actor Sarah Strange - Rennie inevitably seduces those allowed past his defences. Strange talks of his "inexplicable unlearnable electricity. He wanders around around simply wearing it, this combination of wonderful and obnoxious things." His opinions can be blunt, his manner challenging, but a fierce argument about the merits of David Mamet or Redd Foxx or a polemic on neophyte directors is diffused by a sudden beatific smile and a self-satirizing "How's my hair?" It is impossible to argue and laugh at the same time.
Back in Vancouver from the Shaw, in the line-up at a downtown Starbucks, Rennie met Babz Chula, a busy, beautiful actor, fourteen years his senior, struggling through a horrendous marriage break-up. "I had gone from woman to woman," Rennie admits. "Oh god, you'll think I'm a slut machine. I need to be baby-sat and ass-wiped. Everything could fall apart and still this person would take care of me." Chula and Rennie lived together for nearly years. "He never went home," she smiles at the memory. "I fell in love with him. He made me laugh and I'd thought I would never laugh again, but Callum had an addiction as serious as any addiction gets. When he was drunk, he was a falling-down, piss-in-his-pants drunk, a poor-me, alas-my-crummy-life, primma-donna drunk who never wanted to enter into a dialogue, just wanked. He could appear to be functioning really well at times and yet be constantly tense, hungry, gut-churningly anxious. He's a great actor but didn't know - because he was drunk."
Nevertheless, he appeared in Mike Hoolboom's short film Frank's Cock, one unbroken shot of Rennie telling the camera a raw, radiant love story. Hoolboom used him again in Letters from Home, his intimate study of living with AIDS. "We were," Hoolboom recalls, "trying to figure out where the emotional trajectory should be in the final scene. Callum went for it, but was holding back the obvious emotions. I thought it was too flat. I said 'be there, feel it' and we did two more takes. I nearly cried with the passion he protrayed. But I never used those last two. He was right first time. His instincts were perfect. He left space for the viewer to feel those things. On an innate intestinal level he knows exactly what to communicate." Both films went on to win prizes for best short at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Summer 1993. Rennie is in a foul mood, Welfare Wednesday money in his pocket. Wearing bad hair and an attitude, he sits down at a table in a rough Vancouver bar with a bunch of construction workers. One says something derogatory; he says something back. There's lots of macho shoving and the barman tells him to leave. Once outside, he flips his antagonist the bird; the construction worker punches his fist through a place glass window. A shard of glass angles down through the left eyelid and pierces the retina. Rennie remembers screaming.
Months of intense treatment followed. He was thirty three, called this his "Christ year," and made a commitment to change - to career, to sobriety. He started to find small parts on programmes such as The X-Files and Highlander. Gaining confidence, he snarred a recurring role on My Life as a Dog (for which he won a Gemini) and guest spots on Nikita, Forever Knight and Side Effects. His first feature film role, as the ineffectual boyfriend in Mina Shum's Double Happiness, earned him a Genie nomination. Then came arguably the best Canadian film of 1996, Hard Core Logo. In it, Rennie plays an accomplished guitarist who craves success. "I tried to use stuff from my own life in the role of Billy," he notes, "my opinions, my desires, my need for the next thing." Even in abysmal movies - Men with Guns, Excess Baggage - his performance is precise, finely crafted. "I read the material," Rennie explains, "and then allow it the luxury of coming to me. I love walking around and thinking about it. I love the pre-stuff: the way the universe will inform me on choices. The presentation of a role is part of a larger picture - what is the best way to make the story effective? I often imagine my character as a cartoon. I simplify that character, don't give any anything away, don't draw in extra gestures." This season, his work as a geeky-variety store clerk in CBC's Twitch City is elegantly deranged.
One afternoon at a crowded coffee shop, Rennie suddenly announces a love art, the works of Basquiat, Motherwell and Pollock. A Champion sparkplug logo tattooed across the muscle of his right arm is not a punk challenge but a homage to American painter Stuart Davis, who did a series of works based on the design starting in the 1950s. "Success meant I was suddenly able to go to the Tate or the Prado, be a part of a world outside that once seemed frivolous, never tangible." He details the attraction of abstract expressionism and informs me that he has sold a number of his own collages. "Painting puts me into an alpha state. It's a private event. I make all the decisions in the process and never have to deal with the outside world."
Stepping into Due South last March, he dwelt in "a little place of terror", unsure of his ability to do broad comedy, to succeed as a replacement in an established series. "I followed Paul around like Mutt and Jeff: 'Paul, Paul. Do you like me? Do I suck yet? Am I fired?' " Over the months, he gained assurance and comfort. The set became "home." "Working on Due South is like working on an independent film. There are no suits walking around and there is every freedom to do what you think is right. Screwed up I was powerless. Straight I know what should and can be done with the material."
On other productions, Rennie's demands for a voice have caused conflict. He questioned the way his character was made to drive every scene in the CBC movie For Those Who Hunt the Wounded Down. "Jerry Bines was meant to be every other character's vision of a person so if you get him to speak too much you lose what those other people have created." His objections, voiced in what he believed was an off-the-record interview, appeared in print only days before the show's broadcast. He was horrified and very suddenly versed in the ways of the press. but the reviewers quickly forgot the controversy. "The movie really belongs to Callum Keith Rennie," wrote Tony Atherton in the Ottawa Citizen, "who gives Jerry a charisma that shine through his scruffy attire and unkempt hair." The performance earned a place in this year's Gemini nominations.
Paul Gross has allowed Rennie to build the character of Detective Stanley Ray Kowalski much to his own design. "Callum has an ego and will really defend things and argue but he has a good sense of improvisation," says Gross. "In a series, it's better to say here is the template, what do you feel would be interesting to include?" But in October, working on the feature film Last Night during a Due South hiatus, Rennie was forced by writer/director Don McKellar to play his character (a man who spends his last two months of life on earth chasing his every sexual fantasy) as written. Rennie resisted. "Callum makes himself cooler than possible, then uses that as a defense to not allow awkward, less-than-cool moments to sneak out," says McKellar. "It's hard for an actor to ask 'where do I have to go to find myself at a place that may not be natural for me?' I wanted him to find the possibility of the part in himself and that requires an insight into that persona of his. He's high-maintenance, gets himself all fucked up, but I like his problems. They are fascinating. And he achieved great acting, different, rich. He is aware of his own mythology and his gift and is now employing them with more objectivity and maturity."
"I don't know the truth of my past, what was driving me to destroy me," says Rennie. "Drunk, I was one fat opinion that barfed in the fetal position, naked. Sober, my life was still shit. Perhaps there has to be a struggle in order for it to be sweet. Alcohol seemed to be the solution, but I'm not sure if I've fixed the problem, that's my greatest fear. All I know is that if I die tommorow, I have lived four years."
******
Lunch With Paul Gross
Globe and Mail - September 22, 1998
Meet the highest-paid Mountie on the face of the Earth
by Jan Wong
As every good Mountie knows, appearances can be deceiving. In real life, Paul Gross is hardly the clean-living, excruciatingly polite Canadian he portrays on Due South, the comedy-adventure show about a Mountie attached to the Chicago consulate.
Gross chain-smokes Marlboros, gambles in Vegas and swears like, well, a trooper, though not, of course, the Canadian variety. He's even been arrested -- for drunk driving in a church parking lot.
"It was a long time ago, in my youth," says Gross, 39.
He says he was out drinking one night in Stratford, Ont., and was afraid his car would get towed if he left it on the street. So he drove into the church lot, he says, and was immediately surrounded by Stratford's finest, armed with flashlights.
"I did spin a doughnut," he says sheepishly.
"My licence was suspended for a year. It's a good deterrent. I was completely dependent on Martha to drive me to the store," he adds, referring to his wife, the actor Martha Burns.
Gross is probably the highest-paid person in Canadian television history, as well he should be for someone who manages to make our national flair for woodenness seem almost sexy. He currently gets about $2-million a year for starring in Due South, acting as executive producer for Alliance Communications and editing final scripts, plus writing five episodes himself. The show, which has its season premiere on CTV tomorrow at 8 p.m., is watched by 70 million people in 150 countries, including Burkina Faso, Russia and Taiwan.
In mufti, Gross is almost as dazzling as his red-coated alter ego, Constable Benton Fraser. He seems genetically perfect: gorgeous grey eyes, curling dark hair and a mouth of sparkling white teeth. His six-foot, 180-pound body is poured into a grey jersey and black jeans, cinched at the waist with a beaded Indian belt.
Asked what, if anything, is wrong with him, Gross says he hates his beard, or lack thereof. "I look like a rat. Nothing much happens," he says, over a breakfast of bagels and coffee at CTV's Toronto studios.
He runs his fingers down the smooth sides of his mouth. "I have a growth corridor here. That's about it."
Gross is so pretty, in fact, that a few years ago he lost the audition for the role of Jack Nicholson's gay neighbour in As Good As It Gets. The director told him he was too "fine-featured" for the part. His only big role to date in a U.S. movie is a bimbo ski instructor in Aspen Extreme, released by Disney in 1993.
Gross, an army brat, was born in Calgary and was educated in England, Germany and Washington, D.C. At one point he considered medicine, but instead studied drama at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. His hero was and is Sam Shepard, the American playwright and actor.
"He was the first contemporary writer I felt a real kinship with," says Gross, chewing on a TV-studio croissant. "It seemed like a terrific life -- particularly when he hooked up with Jessica Lange."
After university, Gross performed in Canadian regional theatre and wrote several award-winning plays. That latter talent got him an invitation as playwright-in-residence at the Stratford Festival, where he got nicked for the aforementioned drunk parking.
Today, the Mounties are among his biggest fans. But it wasn't always that way. When Due South first aired four years ago, the RCMP hinted at an injunction.
"They didn't want the show to go at all. They were afraid we'd make fun of them," says Gross.
So in the pilot, he wore a technically inaccurate uniform, with a badge on the hat and fire-department buttons on the jacket. "Supposedly that was legally defensible."
These days, the company that supplies the official scarlet uniforms sends him over half a dozen, "with better tailoring," Gross says. And the RCMP, which marks its 125th anniversary this year, invited him to attend a celebratory lunch in Ottawa. (The lunch, alas, was cancelled for budgetary reasons.)
Co-operation wobbles, though, whenever the Mounties feel the heat, which is why you aren't likely to see a Due South episode involving pepper spray any time soon. Take the time Aline Chrétien, wielding an Inuit carving, had to save the Prime Minister's life. That was also about the time the RCMP licenced its trademark to Disney.
"We were supposed to have the Musical Ride. Suddenly they pulled out. We had to scramble around Southern Ontario to find 50 black horses and 50 farmboys."
Gross performs whatever stunts the series' insurance company allows him. He nearly fell off a moving train once. Another time, he dangled off the roof of Toronto's Metro Hall. It's partly because as executive producer, he wants efficiency: He knows he can film it in one take, compared with three or four by a stunt man. It's because he likes the thrill, too.
Gross also rides horses, herds cattle, sings and plays the guitar, writes his own songs and can complete The Globe and Mail's cryptic crossword puzzle in 10 minutes. In short, aside from all his vices, he's perfect.
"I have a really good memory," he adds, sipping his coffee. "I remember the most useless things, like why there is a tree line."
Hmmm. But he can't remember the birthdays of his two children, Hannah, 8, and Jack, 4. Nor is he sure of his wife's. "April 23? Or maybe the 24th."
What about his wedding anniversary? Under questioning, it dawns on Gross that the big 10th falls this Friday. At least he thinks it does.
"Presents," he says. "Help me think of a present. What about a chainsaw?"
******
You Can Just Callum Charismatic
Toronto Sun - October 22, 1998
Rennie brings cool edge and abundant life experience to his roles
By Bruce Kirkland
Callum Keith Rennie's character in a new movie, Last Night, is sex obsessed -- in the sweetest way possible.
"He's not bad, he's not evil," the actor says.
Rennie, the epitome of ragged cool in a country that is wary of charisma, plays a carnal yet naive man who is toting up his conquests by category. So he joyfully beds his high school French teacher (Genevieve Bujold) and awkwardly propositions his best buddy (Don McKellar).
He doesn't have much time. Last Night, written and directed by McKellar and opening here tomorrow, is the darkly comic story of what happens to a group of Torontonians in the last six hours of life on Planet Earth. Other key performers include Sandra Oh, David Cronenberg and Sarah Polley.
Before filming, Rennie was worried that his character might turn into a pyscho or just a jerk. "Don and I had a lot of discussions about that because, on the page, he looked like he might be a sociopath rather than just a sweet guy who's just trying to get some things out of the way, some experiences that he really wants to touch upon before he departs.
"On the page, it looked quite daunting. Are these acts of love or acts of loathing or acts of expression? The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom."
Talking with Rennie is an intriguing experience. He thinks. He reacts. He teases. He provokes. He pushes boundaries. Rennie is a reformed alcoholic and drug dabbler who has been clean-and-sober for five years and now casually refers to his years of booze-soaked despair as "the addiction."
REJECTS THE 'STAR' LABEL
He came to acting and public notoriety late. Now 38, Rennie was 33 when he finally took acting seriously as a craft and as a career. In films, he was discovered as Sandra Oh's boyfriend in Mina Shum's Double Happiness, going on to roles in John L'Ecuyer's Curtis's Charm and Bruce McDonald's hugely underrated Hard Core Logo. On TV, he played Paul Gross' 'American' counterpart in the last year of Due South.
Just don't call him "a star," even though, with his smoldering eyes and natural charm, he is star material. "I don't think they really understand what they're talking about," he says wearily of journalists who have dubbed him as Canada's "hottest" actor. "I can't get asses in the seats for movies. There has been more coverage of me for a television show (Due South) than for any movie I've done."
That might change with Last Night or Cronenberg's futuristic thriller eXistenZ -- Rennie is part of an international ensemble -- but he is not cocky. "I've learned not to invest over the years because of how films like Hard Core Logo and some other ones have just not done well.
"They can get all the publicity and advertising and the greatest hype -- and all for the right reasons -- and a Canadian audience will still not respond to it because it doesn't have a 'star' name. If we had put Keanu Reeves in Hard Core, there would have been a greater audience for it. It's the marquee name and that's the nature of the business, which we have yet to understand in Canada."
Born in Sunderland, England, raised in Edmonton from the age of four and trained in acting between bouts of alcoholic depression across English Canada from Vancouver to Toronto, Rennie is now based in both Toronto and L.A.., where he has had a sublet since September. He is growing impatient with Canadian sensibilities, especially in film.
"It's hard. And it always sounds like a bitch and that you're biting the hand that feeds you. But you feel confused here. You just don't know what's around the corner, what's next. If you stay here long enough, you're the lobster climbing out of the pot and everybody's going to hate your guts."
******
Last Word: The Questionnaire
The Guardian - 1998
Lastword: The questionaire: Paul Gross
copyright 1998 UMI Company
Compiled by Rosanna Greenstreet
Paul Gross, 38, was born in Calgary and educated in Canada, England, Germany and the US. After graduating in drama, he became an actor and playwright. He later won an award for his protrayal of Mountie Constable Benton Fraser in the TV series Due South. He is married with two children, and lives in Toronto.
What is your idea of perfect happiness? Gainful employment.
What is your greatest fear? Gainful employment.
With which historical figure do you most identify? Attila the Hun, because he was a good horseman.
Which living person do you most admire? A horse whisperer named Monty Roberts.
What is your greatest extravagance? Guitars -- I buy them by the truckload, but can only play a D chord.
Where would you like to live? In Montreal, if Montreal was where Calgary is.
What makes you depressed? Arms merchants.
What is your favourite book? Moby Dick.
How did you vote in the last election? Poorly.
How will you vote in the next election? Poorly -- there is no option.
Should the Royal Family be scrapped? Absolutely not. They are a great source of entertainment for North America. You keep the Royals and, in exchange, we'll give you a steady stream of diverting lunatics in the mould of Michael Jackson, Madonna, and Margaret Trudeau.
For what cause would you die? My family.
Do you believe in monogamy? Yes, in direct proportion to my fear of bigamy.
Which living person do you most despise? A building inspector from Toronto who could make anyone's life miserable.
What do you consider the most overrated virtue? Hope.
Have you ever said "I love you" and not meant it? Sure -- this is an essential skill for every male adolescent.
Which words or phrases do you most overuse? Thank you kindly.
What is your greatest regret? That I never put to sea on a square rigger.
How do you relax? Work, music, pharmaceuticals.
How often do you have sex? I'm having it right now.
What single thing would improve the quality of your life? Less sex.
What is the most important lesson life has taught you? The schooling is far from complete. Ask me when I'm nearer the end.
******
Twitch City director waits for film to take off
By RUSSELL MULVEY
Don McKellar really isn't all that twitchy. No nervous ticks. No funny
mannerisms. He is really hairy, which is why, as an actor, he is reluctant
to take his clothes off but other than that he has no particularly
noteworthy eccentricities.
McKellar was the guy who watched TV all the time in the CBC series Twitch
City. He was also the barber in Highway 61. He also had a supporting role
in Atom Egoyan's Exotica-the film where he had to expose his hairy body.
Don McKellar is also a writer whose credits include Twitch City and Highway
61. Don McKellar is also a director. Of the three-acting, writing and
directing-it is directing that he has done the least. He does have two
short films under his belt-Blue, which stars Canadian director David
Cronenberg, and The Bloody Nose. He has just finished directing his first
feature film, which he also wrote and stars in. McKellar was in town
recently for Local Heroes giving a seminar, along with director Bruce
Sweeney (Live Bait), on the relationship between actors and directors. He
is a bit appalled at how little Edmonton film directors know about acting.
"I get the feeling," says McKellar, "that most of the directors around here
have not taken any acting classes. And they really should. Everybody who
wants to be a director should do some acting, should do a lot of acting."
Misses the stage
McKellar got his start as an actor in theatre, founding his own theatre
company that continues to put on plays in Toronto. He misses the theatre.
"I'd like to get back to it. Movies take just too damn long. It can take a
year before you've seen anything. Theatre's a lot more immediate. I like
that. There's no fooling around with your opening date. You set it and you
do it. How does the theme to the Bugs Bunny show go? I can't remember,
something like: 'No more nursing or rehearsing a part.' That's what I like
about the theatre. Movies are vague, you never know what is really going to
happen. Too many people involved in making decisions about what is really
going to be going on. I have no idea when Last Night is actually going to
be released."
Last Night is McKellar's latest film, his first feature film and he is
concerned that he is not as apprehensive about it as he thinks he should
be.
"It's out of my hands. It's finished."
Last Night stars Genevieve Bujold, the Canadian star of such films as
Adventures of Pinochio, Dead Ringers and Coma. She is also noteworthy
because she was set to play the captain of the Starship Voyager on the
popular TV series but quit when she realized how much work was involved.
McKellar is happy about that, as it is unlikely she would have been
available for his film had she been doing the series.
"I don't mean," says McKellar, "that I don't think she would have made a
great starship captain but you know, the future's loss is our gain."
Millennium project
The future, the immediate future, is the subject of Last Night.
"It's about the millennium and about what a few people end up doing when
they think the world is going to end. It is actually part of a series of
films that was conceived of by a French and German arts channel. They just
asked me if I was interested and I said 'Yes' and submitted a proposal to
them, just an outline of a story. They went for it.
"The Europeans actually commissioned a whole series of films about the
millennium from about a dozen countries around the world."
McKellar has considerable experience working with Canada's national TV
network. His critically acclaimed series Twitch City was recently shown on
CBC and he is more or less happy about the way it turned out.
"The thing of it is, is that Twitch City was conceived of more than four
years ago. It took three years to get it shot and we rushed to finish last
year because they were going to show it last spring. I sometimes wonder
who's actually in charge at CBC. One can't figure it out. I've learned not
to complain because you know they did do it and they didn't interfere and
it did get shown but you've got to wonder. The ratings were really good,
particularly in the first episodes before the Olympics, then they dropped a
bit and then the last show was very, very good, I mean, as far as ratings
go. And it was cheap, really cheap [to make].
CBC never gets too excited
"I don't know, I don't know why I don't have dozens of CBC executives
leaving messages for me, wanting more episodes. Not that I'd really want to
have that but you'd think that they would. It is a little hard to
understand. I don't think that the CBC has ever fallen over themselves
trying to get anything."
McKellar isn't certain that he would want to do more episodes of Twitch
City, anyway.
"We haven't really discussed it. But from our side too, it isn't a fait
accompli, I mean everyone is working. I don't know that I would want to do
it. The show would have to be reworked, I mean, considering the way it
ended. It would be easy enough to do badly, to go to a format of having a
new and weirder roommate each week but I don't know. I mean, that would
just be formulaic television again, no matter how weird the roommates were
or got. I don't think that I would want to do that anyway. The whole
sit-com thing becomes tedious. It would just become a matter of dealing
with the same frustrations week after week."
Nor is McKellar convinced that he would let somebody else do the show.
"It is possible that somebody will be interested in the idea but we haven't
really explored that. We could shop the idea. I don't know that I would
even consider that. I'm sure they would just go to some tedious format, the
new-and-weirder-roommate every week concept."
******
WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM HIS PALS
FRIENDS SUPPORT McKELLAR'S DEBUT DIRECTING LAST NIGHT
By Glen Schaefer
Directing his first feature was painless for Toronto actor Don McKellar, who had some help from his friends in the making of his end-of-the-world comedy Last Night.
McKellar got his on-screen start acting in movies by fellow Hogtowner Bruce McDonald. After than came roles with Atom Egoyan and Patricia Rozema.
Off-screen, many of the Toronto players are friends as well, including cult favorite David Cronenberg.
"It's not so much a web of conspiracy as it is a very small industry," says McKellar, casual in untucked shirt and black jeans for a Vancouver interview. "People from outside the country, they're all amazed that we hang out together, have lunch together. The fact is, we're pals. We realized a long itme ago that each other's success is going to be good for everyone."
When Last Night won the Prix de Jeunesse at the Cannes FF in May, he thanked the directors he named as his teachers.
McKellar says he was anxious before directing his screenplay about a low-key end of the world.
"But it was a lot easier than I feared," he says. "Those things (acting and directing) had more of an overlap than people would allow -- there's a similar process."
The movie had its beginnings in a competition, inviting 10 films from10 countries on the subject of the coming millennium.
"I had a feeling that the millennium was already dated," he says. "I came up with this empty city landscape, focusing on the characters rather than the disaster."
The film has Cronenberg playing a gas company executive who spends his last day telephoning customers and thanking them for their patronage.
"I was partly poking fun at that Canadian thing, the Cronenberg character working until the end," McKellar says. "But I wanted to show the heroic and noble side to that, these people trying to maintain their dignity."
McKellar himself plays a melancholy loner, still mourning the recent death by illness of his girlfriend. He won't be specific, but he says there's some autobiography there.
"Certainly thinking about the death of all humanity made me think about deaths close to me," he says.
There's irony at play, as well, in his character's tearful speech about the girlfriend's death, which ends with the deprecating observation: "That's my big story.":
McKellar says he's wary of big emotions onscreen. "For me to write that speech, I felt queasy, so I undercut it. It's kind of a generational thing to be suspicious."
The movie's cast is filled out by former Vancouverites Sandra Oh and Callum Keith Rennie, now both secure in the TV series Arliss and Due South, respectively. McKellar says the actors, friends all, got involved in his movie for the script, not the money.
"I got an amazing cast and fairly effortlessly," McKellar says. "Those scripts that you can really believe in are pretty rare, regardless of money."
McKellar had previously directed Cronenberg in the short film Blue and they switched roles earlier this year when Cronenberg directed McKellar in the upcoming new thriller, eXistenZ.
"To me, he represents a fairly skewed kind of Canadian persona," McKellar says of his fellow actor-director. "He's a really polite, courteous, well-groomed character, but just a little off behind the eyes."
McKellar puts his actors in an abandoned city, with littered streets, bare trees burning and smoke around distant high-rises. "It was the idea that the party, the people were off somewhere else, and we were following the people who had come to terms with it in someway."
The movie leaves unspecified exactly what was causing the end of the world.
"Initially, I thought maybe it was going to be an asteroid -- thank god I didn't," he says, adding he didn't know as he wrote that two big budget efforts -- Deep Impact and Armageddon -- were taking on the end of the world as well. "The explanations always seems so boring to me in
those movies."
Bruce Willis' Armageddon arrived in Cannes this year, too, and turned into a gift for McKellar.
"The French just despised Armageddon and it was so much the opposite of what I was doing that I couldn't have benn more pleased, actually," he says. "It meant fantastic press for me."
The awars and publicity that followed in Cannes assured the movie of distribution throughout the world. It opens in Canada October 23.
******
12 Steps to Stardom
Saturday Night - March 1998
Callum Keith Rennie has had a great four years. Now if he can only survive the next four
By Veronica Cusack
"You fart hammers pull those weapons in Chicago...": Callum Keith Rennie spits the words across the barroom sleaze of the Due South set.
"What the fuck does fart hammers mean?" demands Paul Gross.
"Creeps. It's in the Big Book."
"Well," pronounces Gross, executive producer and senior writer, "if it's in the Big Book I guess we have to let it go."
Filming resumes. "Callum has a dictionary of American slang he carries around," Gross later explains. "We call it the Big Book, but he only has A to H; he's missing the rest. We're going along and suddenly he will come up with somthing he's found. What's neat is that I'd never write that; fart hammers is just not something that comes to mind. It's not a big deal, it's just part of a line yet it adds colour that is perfect for the show. But nothing after H."
In the slightly demented, lisenced in 110 countries, viewed by umpteen million television series Due South, thirty-seven year old Callum Keith Rennie stars opposite Gross's decorous Mountie as a manic Chicago detective who acts without consideration, speaks without thought and years to lose himself in the gentle glide of ballroom dancing. Twelve months of Toronto shooting, covering the show's final two seasons, this month comes to an end. His stint as a replacement for David Marciano (who left the series last year in a fit of financial pique) has ensured the actor extensive exposure in Europe, North America and the Pacific. It has enabled him to work with established, even great performers and earned him money far removed from the welfare cheques of his not-too-distant past.
"It's hard to be interviewed," Rennie says, in a Queen Street West cafe. "I don't want to sound arrogant but I don't want to sound like a pushover and I don't know who I am but I think I am defined by my relationships but I don't have that many friends..."
He has the face of an ascetic, fragile bones straining against pale skin. There is a nervous elegance to his movements, in how his spine curves toward a conversations. His eyes glint ice blue, the left red-rimmed, tiring easily, its vision weak. He is conceit and humility all at once, confession and concealment. Stream-of-consciousness jags abate, though never completely disappear, and make way for introspection, contemplation. "I'm called 'bad boy' or 'the new James Dean' by those who want to romanticize my past - who don't want to see it as a life of pain in which I was another person."
"A brilliant actor able to suggest the capacity for both extreme violence and gentle compassion with just a look," declared The Vancouver Sun in late 1996 when Rennie starred in the CBC's acclaimed For Those Who Hunt the Wounded Down. "Easily Canada's hottest young actor," proclaimed Britain's Screen International magazine after his appearance in Bruce McDonald's Hard Core Logo, the story of an imploding rock band. In an earlier life, Rennie worked as a tree planter, paper baler, bartender. He is a recovering alcoholic, sweet as sin when it pleases him, at other times a disturbing, disconcerting presence: "I'm an addict - print that!"
I wait for the Click, the moment when a subject relaxes, forgets formality and begins to truly talk. It doesn't always happen; some are ever aware of the public face. With Rennie is happens repeatedly. Off. On. Off. On. Self-concern, revelation, apprehension, candour. It comes in a tony restaurant across from a white linened table top; in the middle of a cell-phone call from his chauffeured car: "I'm going to get a tumour in my head," he laughs, then stays on the line for an hour; from a tall ship afloat on Lake Ontario, until he's called back to filming, "I have to go now and kiss a serving wench."
Born in the industrial city of Sunderland in northeast England, Rennie immigrated to Canada at the age of four and was raised in middle-class Edmonton, the second of three sons. "I thought about being an actor at eighteen, but didn't do anything about it. It seemed like a vain retarded thing to pursue." Instead he clutched at the fledgling punk movement and the Sex Pistols' creed of "get pissed; destroy." He had been drinking heavily since since his mid-teens. "When I was seventeen I drank a twenty-six ounce bottle of vodka in half an hour and went into convulsions. I woke up in the hospital. Alcohol became many things: an antidote to pain, a means of being more outspoken, a way to feel better than I did in my regular life. I'm sure I laughed a lot, if only I could remember. I didn't see it as a problem until later on, until everything around me - relationships, trust - was destroyed. When did fun become fun with problems and then become just problems?"
I recognize that final sentece, know it has been recited to other journalists. The past is his shield, talking about it his means of keeping others at bay. Like acting, it is an elaborate armour. "On the Due South set I can talk to anyone, say anything. Saturdays [away from the set] are insane. I'm unsure if I can go outside - what's it like out there? how is everyone? was I cruel today? I don't know if I can deal with people. I don't know how many weird things I can see in one day before I have to go home and lie down. Sunday is a fucking eternity."
In the early eighties, friends at the University of Alberta asked him to write for and join the cast of a campus radio show inspired by the British Goon Show. The same troupe produced David Mamet's American Buffalo at the 1985 Edmonton Fringe Festival and Rennie played the part of Bobby, the artless young protege of two small time cons. He had discovered his vocation. But he was still drinking, more. "I woke up in alleys and drunk tanks. I needed to drink until it hurt. Alcohol made me scrambled, fucked, screwed up. It's all about losing because losing is where you want to be. Other drugs don't give you the same shit feeling you need."
He moved to Vancouver, questioning his own abilities - Can I act? Can I participate in the world? - and enrolled in the Bruhanski Theatre Studio. "His was a self-destructive tremendous talent," recalls Alex Bruhanski. "Callum's battles were never with his craft. They were always with Callum."
Christopher Newton, artistic director of the Shaw Festival, invited Rennie to appear in the 1990/91 season after seeing the Touchstone Theatre production of Lost Souls and Missing Persons, his first professional performance. "I recognized he was incredibly talented and charismatic with the natural gift of making dialogue sound true," says Newton. "Acting came easy to him, but at the Shaw he realized this profession could be difficult." Newton is being diplomatic. Rennie remembers missed performances, benders. "I was used to a co-op mentality," he says now, "not the corporate world of theatre. I can handle a life audience of a hundred or so but nothing bigger than that. Knowing all day long a gig is coming up, that would haunt me."
Despite fascination with self - "Being with Callum is about Callum," says his friend, actor Sarah Strange - Rennie inevitably seduces those allowed past his defences. Strange talks of his "inexplicable unlearnable electricity. He wanders around around simply wearing it, this combination of wonderful and obnoxious things." His opinions can be blunt, his manner challenging, but a fierce argument about the merits of David Mamet or Redd Foxx or a polemic on neophyte directors is diffused by a sudden beatific smile and a self-satirizing "How's my hair?" It is impossible to argue and laugh at the same time.
Back in Vancouver from the Shaw, in the line-up at a downtown Starbucks, Rennie met Babz Chula, a busy, beautiful actor, fourteen years his senior, struggling through a horrendous marriage break-up. "I had gone from woman to woman," Rennie admits. "Oh god, you'll think I'm a slut machine. I need to be baby-sat and ass-wiped. Everything could fall apart and still this person would take care of me." Chula and Rennie lived together for nearly years. "He never went home," she smiles at the memory. "I fell in love with him. He made me laugh and I'd thought I would never laugh again, but Callum had an addiction as serious as any addiction gets. When he was drunk, he was a falling-down, piss-in-his-pants drunk, a poor-me, alas-my-crummy-life, primma-donna drunk who never wanted to enter into a dialogue, just wanked. He could appear to be functioning really well at times and yet be constantly tense, hungry, gut-churningly anxious. He's a great actor but didn't know - because he was drunk."
Nevertheless, he appeared in Mike Hoolboom's short film Frank's Cock, one unbroken shot of Rennie telling the camera a raw, radiant love story. Hoolboom used him again in Letters from Home, his intimate study of living with AIDS. "We were," Hoolboom recalls, "trying to figure out where the emotional trajectory should be in the final scene. Callum went for it, but was holding back the obvious emotions. I thought it was too flat. I said 'be there, feel it' and we did two more takes. I nearly cried with the passion he protrayed. But I never used those last two. He was right first time. His instincts were perfect. He left space for the viewer to feel those things. On an innate intestinal level he knows exactly what to communicate." Both films went on to win prizes for best short at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Summer 1993. Rennie is in a foul mood, Welfare Wednesday money in his pocket. Wearing bad hair and an attitude, he sits down at a table in a rough Vancouver bar with a bunch of construction workers. One says something derogatory; he says something back. There's lots of macho shoving and the barman tells him to leave. Once outside, he flips his antagonist the bird; the construction worker punches his fist through a place glass window. A shard of glass angles down through the left eyelid and pierces the retina. Rennie remembers screaming.
Months of intense treatment followed. He was thirty three, called this his "Christ year," and made a commitment to change - to career, to sobriety. He started to find small parts on programmes such as The X-Files and Highlander. Gaining confidence, he snarred a recurring role on My Life as a Dog (for which he won a Gemini) and guest spots on Nikita, Forever Knight and Side Effects. His first feature film role, as the ineffectual boyfriend in Mina Shum's Double Happiness, earned him a Genie nomination. Then came arguably the best Canadian film of 1996, Hard Core Logo. In it, Rennie plays an accomplished guitarist who craves success. "I tried to use stuff from my own life in the role of Billy," he notes, "my opinions, my desires, my need for the next thing." Even in abysmal movies - Men with Guns, Excess Baggage - his performance is precise, finely crafted. "I read the material," Rennie explains, "and then allow it the luxury of coming to me. I love walking around and thinking about it. I love the pre-stuff: the way the universe will inform me on choices. The presentation of a role is part of a larger picture - what is the best way to make the story effective? I often imagine my character as a cartoon. I simplify that character, don't give any anything away, don't draw in extra gestures." This season, his work as a geeky-variety store clerk in CBC's Twitch City is elegantly deranged.
One afternoon at a crowded coffee shop, Rennie suddenly announces a love art, the works of Basquiat, Motherwell and Pollock. A Champion sparkplug logo tattooed across the muscle of his right arm is not a punk challenge but a homage to American painter Stuart Davis, who did a series of works based on the design starting in the 1950s. "Success meant I was suddenly able to go to the Tate or the Prado, be a part of a world outside that once seemed frivolous, never tangible." He details the attraction of abstract expressionism and informs me that he has sold a number of his own collages. "Painting puts me into an alpha state. It's a private event. I make all the decisions in the process and never have to deal with the outside world."
Stepping into Due South last March, he dwelt in "a little place of terror", unsure of his ability to do broad comedy, to succeed as a replacement in an established series. "I followed Paul around like Mutt and Jeff: 'Paul, Paul. Do you like me? Do I suck yet? Am I fired?' " Over the months, he gained assurance and comfort. The set became "home." "Working on Due South is like working on an independent film. There are no suits walking around and there is every freedom to do what you think is right. Screwed up I was powerless. Straight I know what should and can be done with the material."
On other productions, Rennie's demands for a voice have caused conflict. He questioned the way his character was made to drive every scene in the CBC movie For Those Who Hunt the Wounded Down. "Jerry Bines was meant to be every other character's vision of a person so if you get him to speak too much you lose what those other people have created." His objections, voiced in what he believed was an off-the-record interview, appeared in print only days before the show's broadcast. He was horrified and very suddenly versed in the ways of the press. but the reviewers quickly forgot the controversy. "The movie really belongs to Callum Keith Rennie," wrote Tony Atherton in the Ottawa Citizen, "who gives Jerry a charisma that shine through his scruffy attire and unkempt hair." The performance earned a place in this year's Gemini nominations.
Paul Gross has allowed Rennie to build the character of Detective Stanley Ray Kowalski much to his own design. "Callum has an ego and will really defend things and argue but he has a good sense of improvisation," says Gross. "In a series, it's better to say here is the template, what do you feel would be interesting to include?" But in October, working on the feature film Last Night during a Due South hiatus, Rennie was forced by writer/director Don McKellar to play his character (a man who spends his last two months of life on earth chasing his every sexual fantasy) as written. Rennie resisted. "Callum makes himself cooler than possible, then uses that as a defense to not allow awkward, less-than-cool moments to sneak out," says McKellar. "It's hard for an actor to ask 'where do I have to go to find myself at a place that may not be natural for me?' I wanted him to find the possibility of the part in himself and that requires an insight into that persona of his. He's high-maintenance, gets himself all fucked up, but I like his problems. They are fascinating. And he achieved great acting, different, rich. He is aware of his own mythology and his gift and is now employing them with more objectivity and maturity."
"I don't know the truth of my past, what was driving me to destroy me," says Rennie. "Drunk, I was one fat opinion that barfed in the fetal position, naked. Sober, my life was still shit. Perhaps there has to be a struggle in order for it to be sweet. Alcohol seemed to be the solution, but I'm not sure if I've fixed the problem, that's my greatest fear. All I know is that if I die tommorow, I have lived four years."
******
Lunch With Paul Gross
Globe and Mail - September 22, 1998
Meet the highest-paid Mountie on the face of the Earth
by Jan Wong
As every good Mountie knows, appearances can be deceiving. In real life, Paul Gross is hardly the clean-living, excruciatingly polite Canadian he portrays on Due South, the comedy-adventure show about a Mountie attached to the Chicago consulate.
Gross chain-smokes Marlboros, gambles in Vegas and swears like, well, a trooper, though not, of course, the Canadian variety. He's even been arrested -- for drunk driving in a church parking lot.
"It was a long time ago, in my youth," says Gross, 39.
He says he was out drinking one night in Stratford, Ont., and was afraid his car would get towed if he left it on the street. So he drove into the church lot, he says, and was immediately surrounded by Stratford's finest, armed with flashlights.
"I did spin a doughnut," he says sheepishly.
"My licence was suspended for a year. It's a good deterrent. I was completely dependent on Martha to drive me to the store," he adds, referring to his wife, the actor Martha Burns.
Gross is probably the highest-paid person in Canadian television history, as well he should be for someone who manages to make our national flair for woodenness seem almost sexy. He currently gets about $2-million a year for starring in Due South, acting as executive producer for Alliance Communications and editing final scripts, plus writing five episodes himself. The show, which has its season premiere on CTV tomorrow at 8 p.m., is watched by 70 million people in 150 countries, including Burkina Faso, Russia and Taiwan.
In mufti, Gross is almost as dazzling as his red-coated alter ego, Constable Benton Fraser. He seems genetically perfect: gorgeous grey eyes, curling dark hair and a mouth of sparkling white teeth. His six-foot, 180-pound body is poured into a grey jersey and black jeans, cinched at the waist with a beaded Indian belt.
Asked what, if anything, is wrong with him, Gross says he hates his beard, or lack thereof. "I look like a rat. Nothing much happens," he says, over a breakfast of bagels and coffee at CTV's Toronto studios.
He runs his fingers down the smooth sides of his mouth. "I have a growth corridor here. That's about it."
Gross is so pretty, in fact, that a few years ago he lost the audition for the role of Jack Nicholson's gay neighbour in As Good As It Gets. The director told him he was too "fine-featured" for the part. His only big role to date in a U.S. movie is a bimbo ski instructor in Aspen Extreme, released by Disney in 1993.
Gross, an army brat, was born in Calgary and was educated in England, Germany and Washington, D.C. At one point he considered medicine, but instead studied drama at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. His hero was and is Sam Shepard, the American playwright and actor.
"He was the first contemporary writer I felt a real kinship with," says Gross, chewing on a TV-studio croissant. "It seemed like a terrific life -- particularly when he hooked up with Jessica Lange."
After university, Gross performed in Canadian regional theatre and wrote several award-winning plays. That latter talent got him an invitation as playwright-in-residence at the Stratford Festival, where he got nicked for the aforementioned drunk parking.
Today, the Mounties are among his biggest fans. But it wasn't always that way. When Due South first aired four years ago, the RCMP hinted at an injunction.
"They didn't want the show to go at all. They were afraid we'd make fun of them," says Gross.
So in the pilot, he wore a technically inaccurate uniform, with a badge on the hat and fire-department buttons on the jacket. "Supposedly that was legally defensible."
These days, the company that supplies the official scarlet uniforms sends him over half a dozen, "with better tailoring," Gross says. And the RCMP, which marks its 125th anniversary this year, invited him to attend a celebratory lunch in Ottawa. (The lunch, alas, was cancelled for budgetary reasons.)
Co-operation wobbles, though, whenever the Mounties feel the heat, which is why you aren't likely to see a Due South episode involving pepper spray any time soon. Take the time Aline Chrétien, wielding an Inuit carving, had to save the Prime Minister's life. That was also about the time the RCMP licenced its trademark to Disney.
"We were supposed to have the Musical Ride. Suddenly they pulled out. We had to scramble around Southern Ontario to find 50 black horses and 50 farmboys."
Gross performs whatever stunts the series' insurance company allows him. He nearly fell off a moving train once. Another time, he dangled off the roof of Toronto's Metro Hall. It's partly because as executive producer, he wants efficiency: He knows he can film it in one take, compared with three or four by a stunt man. It's because he likes the thrill, too.
Gross also rides horses, herds cattle, sings and plays the guitar, writes his own songs and can complete The Globe and Mail's cryptic crossword puzzle in 10 minutes. In short, aside from all his vices, he's perfect.
"I have a really good memory," he adds, sipping his coffee. "I remember the most useless things, like why there is a tree line."
Hmmm. But he can't remember the birthdays of his two children, Hannah, 8, and Jack, 4. Nor is he sure of his wife's. "April 23? Or maybe the 24th."
What about his wedding anniversary? Under questioning, it dawns on Gross that the big 10th falls this Friday. At least he thinks it does.
"Presents," he says. "Help me think of a present. What about a chainsaw?"
******
You Can Just Callum Charismatic
Toronto Sun - October 22, 1998
Rennie brings cool edge and abundant life experience to his roles
By Bruce Kirkland
Callum Keith Rennie's character in a new movie, Last Night, is sex obsessed -- in the sweetest way possible.
"He's not bad, he's not evil," the actor says.
Rennie, the epitome of ragged cool in a country that is wary of charisma, plays a carnal yet naive man who is toting up his conquests by category. So he joyfully beds his high school French teacher (Genevieve Bujold) and awkwardly propositions his best buddy (Don McKellar).
He doesn't have much time. Last Night, written and directed by McKellar and opening here tomorrow, is the darkly comic story of what happens to a group of Torontonians in the last six hours of life on Planet Earth. Other key performers include Sandra Oh, David Cronenberg and Sarah Polley.
Before filming, Rennie was worried that his character might turn into a pyscho or just a jerk. "Don and I had a lot of discussions about that because, on the page, he looked like he might be a sociopath rather than just a sweet guy who's just trying to get some things out of the way, some experiences that he really wants to touch upon before he departs.
"On the page, it looked quite daunting. Are these acts of love or acts of loathing or acts of expression? The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom."
Talking with Rennie is an intriguing experience. He thinks. He reacts. He teases. He provokes. He pushes boundaries. Rennie is a reformed alcoholic and drug dabbler who has been clean-and-sober for five years and now casually refers to his years of booze-soaked despair as "the addiction."
REJECTS THE 'STAR' LABEL
He came to acting and public notoriety late. Now 38, Rennie was 33 when he finally took acting seriously as a craft and as a career. In films, he was discovered as Sandra Oh's boyfriend in Mina Shum's Double Happiness, going on to roles in John L'Ecuyer's Curtis's Charm and Bruce McDonald's hugely underrated Hard Core Logo. On TV, he played Paul Gross' 'American' counterpart in the last year of Due South.
Just don't call him "a star," even though, with his smoldering eyes and natural charm, he is star material. "I don't think they really understand what they're talking about," he says wearily of journalists who have dubbed him as Canada's "hottest" actor. "I can't get asses in the seats for movies. There has been more coverage of me for a television show (Due South) than for any movie I've done."
That might change with Last Night or Cronenberg's futuristic thriller eXistenZ -- Rennie is part of an international ensemble -- but he is not cocky. "I've learned not to invest over the years because of how films like Hard Core Logo and some other ones have just not done well.
"They can get all the publicity and advertising and the greatest hype -- and all for the right reasons -- and a Canadian audience will still not respond to it because it doesn't have a 'star' name. If we had put Keanu Reeves in Hard Core, there would have been a greater audience for it. It's the marquee name and that's the nature of the business, which we have yet to understand in Canada."
Born in Sunderland, England, raised in Edmonton from the age of four and trained in acting between bouts of alcoholic depression across English Canada from Vancouver to Toronto, Rennie is now based in both Toronto and L.A.., where he has had a sublet since September. He is growing impatient with Canadian sensibilities, especially in film.
"It's hard. And it always sounds like a bitch and that you're biting the hand that feeds you. But you feel confused here. You just don't know what's around the corner, what's next. If you stay here long enough, you're the lobster climbing out of the pot and everybody's going to hate your guts."
******
Last Word: The Questionnaire
The Guardian - 1998
Lastword: The questionaire: Paul Gross
copyright 1998 UMI Company
Compiled by Rosanna Greenstreet
Paul Gross, 38, was born in Calgary and educated in Canada, England, Germany and the US. After graduating in drama, he became an actor and playwright. He later won an award for his protrayal of Mountie Constable Benton Fraser in the TV series Due South. He is married with two children, and lives in Toronto.
What is your idea of perfect happiness? Gainful employment.
What is your greatest fear? Gainful employment.
With which historical figure do you most identify? Attila the Hun, because he was a good horseman.
Which living person do you most admire? A horse whisperer named Monty Roberts.
What is your greatest extravagance? Guitars -- I buy them by the truckload, but can only play a D chord.
Where would you like to live? In Montreal, if Montreal was where Calgary is.
What makes you depressed? Arms merchants.
What is your favourite book? Moby Dick.
How did you vote in the last election? Poorly.
How will you vote in the next election? Poorly -- there is no option.
Should the Royal Family be scrapped? Absolutely not. They are a great source of entertainment for North America. You keep the Royals and, in exchange, we'll give you a steady stream of diverting lunatics in the mould of Michael Jackson, Madonna, and Margaret Trudeau.
For what cause would you die? My family.
Do you believe in monogamy? Yes, in direct proportion to my fear of bigamy.
Which living person do you most despise? A building inspector from Toronto who could make anyone's life miserable.
What do you consider the most overrated virtue? Hope.
Have you ever said "I love you" and not meant it? Sure -- this is an essential skill for every male adolescent.
Which words or phrases do you most overuse? Thank you kindly.
What is your greatest regret? That I never put to sea on a square rigger.
How do you relax? Work, music, pharmaceuticals.
How often do you have sex? I'm having it right now.
What single thing would improve the quality of your life? Less sex.
What is the most important lesson life has taught you? The schooling is far from complete. Ask me when I'm nearer the end.
******
Twitch City director waits for film to take off
By RUSSELL MULVEY
Don McKellar really isn't all that twitchy. No nervous ticks. No funny
mannerisms. He is really hairy, which is why, as an actor, he is reluctant
to take his clothes off but other than that he has no particularly
noteworthy eccentricities.
McKellar was the guy who watched TV all the time in the CBC series Twitch
City. He was also the barber in Highway 61. He also had a supporting role
in Atom Egoyan's Exotica-the film where he had to expose his hairy body.
Don McKellar is also a writer whose credits include Twitch City and Highway
61. Don McKellar is also a director. Of the three-acting, writing and
directing-it is directing that he has done the least. He does have two
short films under his belt-Blue, which stars Canadian director David
Cronenberg, and The Bloody Nose. He has just finished directing his first
feature film, which he also wrote and stars in. McKellar was in town
recently for Local Heroes giving a seminar, along with director Bruce
Sweeney (Live Bait), on the relationship between actors and directors. He
is a bit appalled at how little Edmonton film directors know about acting.
"I get the feeling," says McKellar, "that most of the directors around here
have not taken any acting classes. And they really should. Everybody who
wants to be a director should do some acting, should do a lot of acting."
Misses the stage
McKellar got his start as an actor in theatre, founding his own theatre
company that continues to put on plays in Toronto. He misses the theatre.
"I'd like to get back to it. Movies take just too damn long. It can take a
year before you've seen anything. Theatre's a lot more immediate. I like
that. There's no fooling around with your opening date. You set it and you
do it. How does the theme to the Bugs Bunny show go? I can't remember,
something like: 'No more nursing or rehearsing a part.' That's what I like
about the theatre. Movies are vague, you never know what is really going to
happen. Too many people involved in making decisions about what is really
going to be going on. I have no idea when Last Night is actually going to
be released."
Last Night is McKellar's latest film, his first feature film and he is
concerned that he is not as apprehensive about it as he thinks he should
be.
"It's out of my hands. It's finished."
Last Night stars Genevieve Bujold, the Canadian star of such films as
Adventures of Pinochio, Dead Ringers and Coma. She is also noteworthy
because she was set to play the captain of the Starship Voyager on the
popular TV series but quit when she realized how much work was involved.
McKellar is happy about that, as it is unlikely she would have been
available for his film had she been doing the series.
"I don't mean," says McKellar, "that I don't think she would have made a
great starship captain but you know, the future's loss is our gain."
Millennium project
The future, the immediate future, is the subject of Last Night.
"It's about the millennium and about what a few people end up doing when
they think the world is going to end. It is actually part of a series of
films that was conceived of by a French and German arts channel. They just
asked me if I was interested and I said 'Yes' and submitted a proposal to
them, just an outline of a story. They went for it.
"The Europeans actually commissioned a whole series of films about the
millennium from about a dozen countries around the world."
McKellar has considerable experience working with Canada's national TV
network. His critically acclaimed series Twitch City was recently shown on
CBC and he is more or less happy about the way it turned out.
"The thing of it is, is that Twitch City was conceived of more than four
years ago. It took three years to get it shot and we rushed to finish last
year because they were going to show it last spring. I sometimes wonder
who's actually in charge at CBC. One can't figure it out. I've learned not
to complain because you know they did do it and they didn't interfere and
it did get shown but you've got to wonder. The ratings were really good,
particularly in the first episodes before the Olympics, then they dropped a
bit and then the last show was very, very good, I mean, as far as ratings
go. And it was cheap, really cheap [to make].
CBC never gets too excited
"I don't know, I don't know why I don't have dozens of CBC executives
leaving messages for me, wanting more episodes. Not that I'd really want to
have that but you'd think that they would. It is a little hard to
understand. I don't think that the CBC has ever fallen over themselves
trying to get anything."
McKellar isn't certain that he would want to do more episodes of Twitch
City, anyway.
"We haven't really discussed it. But from our side too, it isn't a fait
accompli, I mean everyone is working. I don't know that I would want to do
it. The show would have to be reworked, I mean, considering the way it
ended. It would be easy enough to do badly, to go to a format of having a
new and weirder roommate each week but I don't know. I mean, that would
just be formulaic television again, no matter how weird the roommates were
or got. I don't think that I would want to do that anyway. The whole
sit-com thing becomes tedious. It would just become a matter of dealing
with the same frustrations week after week."
Nor is McKellar convinced that he would let somebody else do the show.
"It is possible that somebody will be interested in the idea but we haven't
really explored that. We could shop the idea. I don't know that I would
even consider that. I'm sure they would just go to some tedious format, the
new-and-weirder-roommate every week concept."
******
WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM HIS PALS
FRIENDS SUPPORT McKELLAR'S DEBUT DIRECTING LAST NIGHT
By Glen Schaefer
Directing his first feature was painless for Toronto actor Don McKellar, who had some help from his friends in the making of his end-of-the-world comedy Last Night.
McKellar got his on-screen start acting in movies by fellow Hogtowner Bruce McDonald. After than came roles with Atom Egoyan and Patricia Rozema.
Off-screen, many of the Toronto players are friends as well, including cult favorite David Cronenberg.
"It's not so much a web of conspiracy as it is a very small industry," says McKellar, casual in untucked shirt and black jeans for a Vancouver interview. "People from outside the country, they're all amazed that we hang out together, have lunch together. The fact is, we're pals. We realized a long itme ago that each other's success is going to be good for everyone."
When Last Night won the Prix de Jeunesse at the Cannes FF in May, he thanked the directors he named as his teachers.
McKellar says he was anxious before directing his screenplay about a low-key end of the world.
"But it was a lot easier than I feared," he says. "Those things (acting and directing) had more of an overlap than people would allow -- there's a similar process."
The movie had its beginnings in a competition, inviting 10 films from10 countries on the subject of the coming millennium.
"I had a feeling that the millennium was already dated," he says. "I came up with this empty city landscape, focusing on the characters rather than the disaster."
The film has Cronenberg playing a gas company executive who spends his last day telephoning customers and thanking them for their patronage.
"I was partly poking fun at that Canadian thing, the Cronenberg character working until the end," McKellar says. "But I wanted to show the heroic and noble side to that, these people trying to maintain their dignity."
McKellar himself plays a melancholy loner, still mourning the recent death by illness of his girlfriend. He won't be specific, but he says there's some autobiography there.
"Certainly thinking about the death of all humanity made me think about deaths close to me," he says.
There's irony at play, as well, in his character's tearful speech about the girlfriend's death, which ends with the deprecating observation: "That's my big story.":
McKellar says he's wary of big emotions onscreen. "For me to write that speech, I felt queasy, so I undercut it. It's kind of a generational thing to be suspicious."
The movie's cast is filled out by former Vancouverites Sandra Oh and Callum Keith Rennie, now both secure in the TV series Arliss and Due South, respectively. McKellar says the actors, friends all, got involved in his movie for the script, not the money.
"I got an amazing cast and fairly effortlessly," McKellar says. "Those scripts that you can really believe in are pretty rare, regardless of money."
McKellar had previously directed Cronenberg in the short film Blue and they switched roles earlier this year when Cronenberg directed McKellar in the upcoming new thriller, eXistenZ.
"To me, he represents a fairly skewed kind of Canadian persona," McKellar says of his fellow actor-director. "He's a really polite, courteous, well-groomed character, but just a little off behind the eyes."
McKellar puts his actors in an abandoned city, with littered streets, bare trees burning and smoke around distant high-rises. "It was the idea that the party, the people were off somewhere else, and we were following the people who had come to terms with it in someway."
The movie leaves unspecified exactly what was causing the end of the world.
"Initially, I thought maybe it was going to be an asteroid -- thank god I didn't," he says, adding he didn't know as he wrote that two big budget efforts -- Deep Impact and Armageddon -- were taking on the end of the world as well. "The explanations always seems so boring to me in
those movies."
Bruce Willis' Armageddon arrived in Cannes this year, too, and turned into a gift for McKellar.
"The French just despised Armageddon and it was so much the opposite of what I was doing that I couldn't have benn more pleased, actually," he says. "It meant fantastic press for me."
The awars and publicity that followed in Cannes assured the movie of distribution throughout the world. It opens in Canada October 23.
